Josh Cook and Jordan Stilp took their first Renault UK Clio Cup pole positions of the season during qualifying for Rounds Three and Four at Donington Park.
In a rather sedate session, Cook topped the timesheets for almost the whole session, an early time of 1m 17.358 seconds keeping him on top throughout.
“It was quite a weird session,” said Cook.”The tow is worth quite a lot around Donington, I worked with Ash [Hand] and on one lap he would have had pole but he ran wide. I’m happy with the car, the set-up is real nice here. We’ll see how we get on in the first race tomorrow.”
Ant Whorton-Eales made it a SV Racing/KX Akademy one-two, finishing up 0.072 seconds shy of his team-mate, with Stilp making it three cars within a tenth of a second at the front of the field, ending up 0.020 seconds further back.
Stilp’s time denied SV a one-two-three, with Ash Hand left to settle for fourth, having been the only driver in the field to see a lap time disallowed due to exceeding track limits.
Mike Bushell ran as high as second early in the session, but eventually slipped to fifth ahead of James Colburn, while championship leader Alex Morgan was forced to settle for seventh, having been plagued by a host of mechanical gremlins during the meeting so far.
With all the drivers struggling to set any fast times late in the session, the grid order is all change for round four, based on the drivers’ second fastest times.
Stilp secured his maiden Clio Cup pole position with a second best time of 1m 17.495 seconds, with Bushell to join him on the front row, finishing up just 0.033 seconds adrift. Hand took third ahead of team-mates Cook, Whorton-Eales and Morgan.
“It was a brilliant session, we just had to try and change a few things from Brands Hatch,” added 20Ten Racing’s Stilp. “We tested earlier in the week which gave us a much bigger step forward before the weekend. I had to go round on my own, if I was lucky I’d get a little bit of a tow off a couple of the others. It’s always close in Clio Cup, it should be an exciting day tomorrow.”
Seventh fastest for race two, and eighth for the opener, is the leading Masters Cup runner Paul Rivett, with class rival Lee Pattison to join him on the grid for the second encounter, alongside tenth for race one.
Rob Smith will start both races from row five, ninth and tenth respectively, while completing the grid for both races will be Devon Modell, Craig Milner and Mark Howard.
Full Clio qualifying results can be found here: http://tsl-timing.com/toca/2014/141603cli.pdf
